Just like Golson did last January, days after a freshman season -- with no playing time on game days and scout-team status on practice days -- was about to give way to an open quarterback competition in the springin which the Myrtle Beach, S.C., product was decidedly the fourth option out of four going in.

His world has changed so seismically, so serendipitously since then, and it all hits a crescendo Monday night, when Golson takes the reins of the offense of top-ranked Notre Dame (12-0) against No. 2 Alabama (12-1) in the BCS National Championship Game at Sun Life Stadium (8:30 p.m. EST, ESPN).

There, under the brightest spotlight the ND program has played under in the 24 years since its last national title, Golson will be confronted with the most vaunted football defense he may face until/unless he plays on Sundays.

“The thing that’s great about Everett is he really sees this and treats this as just another game,” Hendrix said. “I don’t think the stage is going to be too big for him. Deep inside, he’s the same guy who matured and fought his way up the depth chart.”

Outwardly, his has come full circle. Everett Golson is Monday night’s great unknown.The connotation, as he was ascending, wasn’t necessarily complimentary. Golson was gifted but combustible, hungry but flighty.

There were corners of the locker room and larger segments of the fanbase that expected incumbent Tommy Rees to take back the job when Irish head coach Brian Kelly got tired of looking at Golson’s training wheels.

But Rees unselfishly became one of the most powerful forces in whyGolson has outgrown his modest season stats. He morphed from Golson’s most serious competition to his private tutor, his confidante, his ask.com, if you will.

All-America linebacker Manti Te’o was just as influential, building Golson’s confidence, studying film with him, showing the rest of the Irish he was putting his trust in fellow No. 5. And they followed.

A third stabilizing element was Kelly himself, who had earned thereputation as a quarterback guru of sorts in his head coaching years before landing at ND and had become puzzlingly disconnected from that in his first two years on the job at South Bend.

Kelly forcefully pushed aside many of the non-coaching demands andwent back to his roots this season on many fronts, not the least of which was returning to becoming a hands-on quarterbacks coach on a day-to-day basis.

But the drive that pulled Golson out of the bottom of the depth chartin the first place, not only continued but intensified when he reached the top. Without that, none of the other pieces would have really mattered.

“He had his ups and downs,” observed Kelly, who hopes to collect milestone career coaching win No. 200 on Monday night. “The thing I love about Everett is through the adversity, he has grown. We certainly wouldn't be here without him.

“You know, this long layoff is talked about relative to the process for your football team and preparing them, but I will tell you there probably is only one player that has benefitted as much with this time off, and that's Everett Golson. He's gotten an opportunity to continueto grow.”

But just what will he look like after six weeks-plus between games?

“The unknown (is what) keeps you up at night as a coach,” said Alabamahead coach Nick Saban, who seeks his fourth title overall in the 15-year-old BCS Era and third with the Crimson Tide in the past four seasons.

“Like what are we not prepared for? What might happen in the game thatif you haven't sort of spent the time to get your players ready to play for? How well will you be able to adjust to those circumstances in the game?”

Alabama has faced only two teams this season ranked among the top 25 out of 120 in the FBS in passing efficiency – Georgia, which came within four yards on Dec. 1 of displacing Alabama as the SEC’s rep in Monday’s title matchup, and Texas A&M with Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel.

The Aggies took down Alabama, 29-24, in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on Nov. 10.

The Irish (74th in passing efficiency) are the eighth opponent ranked 60th or lower the Tide has been dealt this season. Yet Golson seems to have not only distanced himself from that ho-hum ranking, but he appears to have the most Manziel-esque skill set among QBs the Tide has clashed with this season.He has also benefitted from being able to practice against his own defense, which mimics Alabama’s not only in its speed and size but its scheme. ND defensive coordinator Bob Diaco and his Alabama counterpart, Kirby Smart, both won national assistant coach of theyear honors and both benefitted from spending time in the same BillParcells/Bill Belichick defensive coaching tree.

It is also Notre Dame’s defense, particular the prowess of its frontseven, that has kept past Irish BCS meltdowns from creeping into the mainstream conversations this week.

For the record, Notre Dame has been outscored 116-43, outgained1,669-876 and outrushed 676-304 in BCS losses to Oregon State (41-9, 2000 season), Ohio State (34-20, 2005) and LSU (41-14, 2006). Those three teams combined for six punts in routing Notre Dame.

In the closest of those games, against the Buckeyes, the Irish yielded a school-record 617 yards. Seven seasons later, the Irish are the No. 1 scoring defense nationally with a chance to end this season with that distinction for the first time since the year the NCAA startedcharting such things – 1946.

Alabama’s counter to this, to everything is Saban himself. He’s a difference-maker in the big moments, because he knows how to manage the small ones and all the little details that come with it.

And much of that has to do with his father, who is not former NFLcoach Lou Saban but a guy who coached Pop Warner football when he wasn’t running his own Dairy Queen/service station business.

“I was 11 years old pumping gas,” Saban said. “But in those days -- notice I said it was a service station -- it wasn't a self-serve. Soyou cleaned the windows, checked the oil, checked the tires, collected the money, gave the change, treated the customers in a certain way. We also greased cars, washed cars.“The biggest thing that I learned, and started to learn at 11 years old, was how important it was to do things correctly. There was a standard of excellence, a perfection. If we washed a car, and I hated the navy blue and black cars, because when you wiped them off, thestreaks were hard to get out. And if there were any streaks when (Dad)came, you had to do it over.

“So we learned a lot about work ethic. We learned a lot about having compassion for other people and respecting other people, and we learned about certainly the importance of doing things correctly.”

How Saban has translated that into football success is why Golson andthe Irish are such heavy underdogs (9½ points) on Monday, even though they’re the No. 1 team in the matchup. How Golson handles being an underdog — again — on Monday night is how he’ll forever be remembered.

“The race is not given to the swift or the strong,” Golson said of thebest advice he has received in the days leading up to his defining moment Monday night. “But it's given to the one that endures to the end.

“We’re, obviously, the underdogs coming into this game, but I thinkthat kind of really (describes) what we're talking about going into the game. Alabama has a great defense, great team — bigger, faster, stronger. But it's really about who's going to endure to the end and play hard for four quarters.”

The guys in the blue jerseys seem to believe that will be them, because they have eventually come to believe in the great unknown. The guys coaching them did all along.

“The thing for us with Everett is our confidence never wavered in anything he was going to become,” Irish offensive coordinator Chuck Maritn said. “We were just pushing the envelope to how quickly we could get him to the level we knew he could play.

“It's no different anywhere, just people want it to happen today.Everett wanted it to happen today and so did we. But we were more realistic. We were probably more realistic than him. He probably put more pressure on himself and had higher demands of how quickly he wanted to play at the level he knew he could play.“It was just a process, and we knew we were going to stick with it. Idon't know that he knew we were always going to stick with it, but there was never any doubt in our mind of what he was going to become for us.”